61–70 of 171 posts
> N^2 scaling: if every fed has to talk to every other fed to exchange messages, the number of connections will scale exponentially
No. That's quadratic growth, which is a fairly mild form of polynomial growth, which is much much much slower than exponential growth.
k k^2 2^k
1 1 1
10 100 1024
100 1e4 1e30Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Each server, being privately owned, can follow their own criteria for rejecting content as they please and users are free to choose what to read and from where." Doesn't this same line of thinking apply to the Internet as a whole? Couldn't your question of "Why would anyone use Nostr?" equally be asked for "Why would anyone use a web browser?"
A web browser is a viewing portal to a specific page, accessed upon request A relay is a stream of stuff you then have to filter It's really like apples and oranges, web pages or blog sites is probably a better thing to ask about than web browsers
For who might be pulled in by the vague title, not knowing what a nostr is, thinking this article has anything to do with evolution - it has nothing to do with evolution or nature. Not one example of nature trying to evolve a nostr is descibed. Maybe like... the author thought a nostr is similar to, I dunno, a pack or tribe or something?
P2P with end-to-end encryption over relays existed in 2001 (e.g. Groove, Mojo Nation) and wasn't invented by Nostr. Nostr is so simple because it handwaves away the fact that everybody seems to use the same small set of relays and there's nothing stopping them from censoring the network. I'm also not aware of any incentives for the relay operators either.
This exactly. Worth mentioning that "censoring" can occur in any of a number of ways; blocking select traffic, slowing select traffic, "forgetting" specific nodes, redirecting other nodes at will, performing MITM attacks (if the protocol isn't secure), etc etc. Also, beyond just no positive incentives, there are nontrivial negatives... they're hubs for an entire network, which can be a lot of traffic and bandwidth if…
It also seems like this is sort of reinventing email.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This exactly. Worth mentioning that "censoring" can occur in any of a number of ways; blocking select traffic, slowing select traffic, "forgetting" specific nodes, redirecting other nodes at will, performing MITM attacks (if the protocol isn't secure), etc etc. Also, beyond just no positive incentives, there are nontrivial negatives... they're hubs for an entire network, which can be a lot of traffic and bandwidth if…
Read up on the outbox model and zaps. Also check out Bitchat for a real world example of Nostr being effectively used without even requiring Internet connectivity. You cannot censor Nostr. Also, check out how zaps work, and relay authentication. You can charge for relays if you want.
Every social media platform needs to a solution to: 1. Content discovery 2. Spam 3. Content moderation I can see relays offering unique solutions to each one. But now they are more than just dumb servers. You get to the point where you might as well just write posts locally then submit them to X, Facebook, etc. You get the same result. And if you include a cryptographic signature with each post, you can prove you are…
"Boom. Same as Nostr, but with existing platforms" - Except without the ability to give and receive real value via zaps, and at the risk of being censored, and losing your entire audience at the whim of the network operators. Spam is basically a solved issue. There's both proof of work and paid relays, not to mention web or trust. It has been at absolute worst a minor annoyance. There's plenty of ways to discover con…
This is easy to say when there is little adoption and attackers don’t care about the network. It doesn’t mean it’ll remain true if that changes. Proof of work is much less effective when people are willing to use botnets and paid relays complicate life for regular users so there’s a cap on how aggressively that can be used.
Every social media platform needs to a solution to: 1. Content discovery 2. Spam 3. Content moderation I can see relays offering unique solutions to each one. But now they are more than just dumb servers. You get to the point where you might as well just write posts locally then submit them to X, Facebook, etc. You get the same result. And if you include a cryptographic signature with each post, you can prove you are…
"Boom. Same as Nostr, but with existing platforms" - Except without the ability to give and receive real value via zaps, and at the risk of being censored, and losing your entire audience at the whim of the network operators. Spam is basically a solved issue. There's both proof of work and paid relays, not to mention web or trust. It has been at absolute worst a minor annoyance. There's plenty of ways to discover con…
Every large relay has the same problem
Nostr will always be a fringe network. The normies do not want to manage their own keys.
Normies manage their house keys just fine. Obviously crypto keys come with different challenges but that's a UX problem. People losing their house keys is not generally an Earth shattering event. Losing a crypto key doesn't have to be either. A wallet is easier to lose than a bank vault, but it also holds less money for the same reason. Crypto keys can be designed the same way, with high importance keys managed by sa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I click a link to reset my keys? What happens when the key is lost, and the consequences like "lose all your money" or "lose your account access" are non-starters, as someone who owns a hardware key for my email account Multi-sig wallets are even more complicated and not for normies
what happens if you lose your password? You click a link to reset it, and it gets sent to your email. What happens if you lose access to your email password? It is the same problem.
It's not the same problem
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read up on the outbox model and zaps. Also check out Bitchat for a real world example of Nostr being effectively used without even requiring Internet connectivity. You cannot censor Nostr. Also, check out how zaps work, and relay authentication. You can charge for relays if you want.
Can you summarize how those prevent the listed problems? Tossing around absolutes like “you cannot censor Nostr” sounds like a religious assertion rather than technical analysis.
But... Outbox model prevents censorship because you push your (cryptographically signed and so impossible to impersonate) messages to multiple relays. To your own preferred relays, as well as to the preferred relays of others who are involved in the conversation, as well as to a couple of global relays for easy discoverability.
These global relays are useful, but are interchangeable and totally replaceable. As soon as you've connected with someone you can retrieve their updates, because you know their preferred relays, and can query them directly.
In this way Nostr has the benefits of centralised networks for discoverability, federated networks for communities, and private individual web site for p2p and archival purposes. As well as making it impossible to censor.
And if you take down THE ENTIRE INTERNET in order to censor Nostr? Well, Bitchat is Nostr via Bluetooth Mesh Networks. Do a quick search and find out where and when it has been used (Nepal, Indonesia, and elsewhere)
And as for zaps fixing the economic problem, I'm not sure what else to say other than you can give and receive value directly using the Lightning Network. It is seamless in most Nostr clients, and built into the Nostr protocol. If you don't believe in Value For Value (v4v) then you can just charge a fee, and the economics problem is solved.